THE CUCKOO 83 



up their spring song for cuckoos very early in the year to 

 utter rough and broken notes, like their cries towards the end 

 of the season. We hear in England the gradual decay of the 

 male cuckoo's song, but nothing of its growth. It first calls to 

 us in the clear and lusty notes which vary in musical interval 

 in the case of different birds, but not in the completeness of 

 delivery. As the season goes on, we hear the cuckoo resolve 

 its clear call of April noons and May dawns into its primitive 

 elements. ' In June it changes its tune,' says the country 

 rhyme ; and this is true in the main, though sometimes the 

 double note becomes threefold even in May, while in other 

 seasons we may hear a perfect double call as late as we hear 

 the bird crying at all. Usually the ' cuck-cuck-00 ' of early 

 June rapidly deteriorates into a hoarse guttural gabble, and 

 that into habitual silence. When greatly excited, even in the 

 heyday of its song in April and May, the cock cuckoo will 

 sometimes utter the hurried threefold notes, and inarticulate 

 guttural cries. These cries are to be heard when two or more 

 cocks are agitatedly obeying the call of a hen; and then, amid 

 an extraordinary storm and volley of mixed cuckoo cries, we 

 have the opportunity of distinguishing the hen's peculiar note. 

 This is a loudly repeated bubbling noise, of the same curious 

 kind as one of the spring cries of the curlew ; it also recalls 

 the spring cry of the dabchick. Perhaps no three birds 

 ever make a more confused noise and excited din than is 

 produced by a hen cuckoo calling up two jealous cocks, which 

 alternately approach and retire from her tree-tops, and shout 

 till the meadows ring. 



As such a scene suggests, the hen cuckoo is polyandrous, 

 and this not only fits in with the general looseness of her 

 parental habits, but suggests a clue to the curious pattern of 

 her eggs. From the evidence of dissected specimens in the 

 laying season, each female cuckoo is believed to lay from five 



